


The Little Things He Left Out

by unholystagepresence



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Family, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-01-07 14:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18412646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unholystagepresence/pseuds/unholystagepresence
Summary: Varric was a liar, and he wasn’t above using this skill to protect Hawke. But with Corypheus not dead at all, he had to come clean about more than just Hawke’s location.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This ship has been my obsession for the past few days, and a few ideas have stuck in my craw, so I gotta get 'em out. I'm not entirely sure if this'll be a whole linear fic yet, or just a collection of drabbles.

It was, frankly, insulting how easy it was to enter the inner walls of Skyhold. All she’d needed was a hood over her head and a crowd of merchants returning in for the night to blend into, and neither guard at the gate batted an eye. Maker’s breath, all she’d needed to do to get directions to Varric’s quarters was ask a scout.  
  
Did nobody recognize the Champion of Kirkwall anymore, or was the Inquisition full of people so bored that they welcomed a potential assassination?  
  
She was getting somewhat frustrated by the time she had picked the lock to Varric’s room and made herself at home in his fancy chair by his big, fancy fire, sipping at his fancy whiskey and chomping down on a fancy apple (or maybe it was actually just a shriveled apple, but Orlesians were weird, she wouldn’t put it past them to think of shriveled apples as a delicacy) from his fancy fruit bowl. Hawke had just settled her feet on the table in front of her and finished half the decanter when the door opened to admit a familiar dwarf figure, griping already about something beneath his breath. Ah, she had missed him.  
  
“Rough day?”  
  
“You would not believe...we get back after weeks of slogging through the Maker damned Hinterlands to do some mundane errands Trevelyan just _had_ to complete, only for my desk to be covered in letters from my editor that apparently just couldn’t wait, because of course they couldn’t.”  
  
He set Bianca somewhat heavily on his desk and drug a hand through his hair. Hawke thought it made him look rakishly disheveled, but she didn’t voice that thought.  
  
“I’ll bet she didn’t even let you sleep in a decent inn, poor thing.”  
  
“You’re one to tal-”  
  
Varric’s head suddenly whipped around, the hand still on Bianca’s stock tightening as if he was ready to shoot her through. Hawke didn’t even glance up, instead examining a pen knife she’d swiped from his desk earlier before using it as a toothpick.  
  
“Shit, Hawke, when did you…?”  
  
“Few hours ago. You know they let just anyone in here? The Inquisitor should really talk to the guards about that; any scoundrel, reprobate, or wanted criminal could just waltz on in without so much as a how-do-you-do.”  
  
There was an interesting play of emotions on his face, before his eyes widened and he settled on concerned.  
  
“Where-?”  
  
Hawke knew exactly what he’d ask, and didn’t miss a beat interrupting him again.  
  
“In that tent city they call a town at the bottom of the mountain. They’re safe.”

The tension in his body left and he exhaled, and Hawke graciously didn’t mock him for it, given that this was the one topic they never joked about.  
  
“Well, I won’t say it isn’t good to see you, Hawke, but I wasn’t expecting you for another few weeks, at least. What, no letter saying ‘Varric, my dashing debonair dwarf, I shall be gracing you with my presence posthaste.’?” He accompanied the falsetto impersonation of her with a batting of the eyelashes. Hawke answered with a belch.  
  
“Classy.”

“I am the epitome of lady-like grace and elegance.”  
  
“Is that why you put your boots on my table and drank half of my good whiskey?”

Hawke nodded sagely. “I learned from the best.”  
  
Varric shook his head, but the quirk of his lips belied his lack of actual annoyance. “Rivaini is not a lady.”

  
Hawke gave a mock gasp, a hand fluttering over her heart. “Such insult! I’ll have you know that I saw Isabella without her pants once, and she is most certainly a lady!”  
  
“Yeah, alright, I walked into that one. You hungry? I’m sure I can get the kitchens to scrounge something up.”  
  
“What a gracious host you are, Messere Tethras. Something filling, please, I don’t think these fancy Orlesian apples did the trick.”  
  
Varric raised a confused brow, then glanced over at the fruit bowl and wrinkled his nose.  
  
“Those are just apples that have been sitting there since I left for the Hinterlands.”  
  
“Hey, far be it for me to claim to understand your new, more expensive tastes.”  
  
Varric just looked at her for a moment, and Hawke held his gaze for a long, tense second. Then, just as she’d intended, the dwarf broke first, letting out a deep belly laugh that brought a genuine smile to her lips. Lips that were claimed, two moments later, when he strode across the room to slip a hand behind her head, drag her forward, and kiss the daylights out of her.  
  
“Andraste’s tits, Hawke, I’ve missed you.”  
  
“I know, I’m very miss-able.”  
  
Varric snorted. “And now the feeling’s gone. You always make that so easy.”  
  
Hawke just grinned at him, and he grinned back, only to find her grabbing his shoulder, spinning him to face the door, and delivering a playful slap to the backside she was very fond of. “I live to serve. Now, go and fetch me dinner, or else I’ll be forced to look for the _really_ good whiskey.”


	2. Just a Little Bit of Home

Varric didn’t realize just how _much_ he’d missed Hawke until he woke up the next morning to cold limbs, half-pushed off the bed with Hawke snoring away in his ear. That it made him want to smile and thank the Maker instead of shove Hawke out of bed meant he’d been a lonely sap indeed.

Much as he wanted to enjoy the inconvenience that was having the Champion as a bed mate, however, the day held more serious things that, while he didn’t look forward to doing them, still needed to be done...lest they get to enjoy the end of the world.

And Varric preferred the idea of ‘enjoying’ Hawke’s Maker-damned snoring for many years to come, thank you very much.

So he gave Hawke a shove, getting only a mumble in return as she curled up tighter in his blankets.

“Hawke, wake up.”

"S'cold..."

“You’ll survive. Now, c’mon. I’d love to listen to that cave bear impression of yours all day, but we’ve got work to do.”  
  
Hawke opened just one eye to peer at him from her warm cocoon, and he could tell that even in her half-asleep state she was calculating how best to convince him that ‘no, they didn’t have to do anything so early, really, what was a few more minutes in bed?’

Had this been any other day, any other place, he would have played along and let her have her way.

“If you don’t get up, I’m not bringing you breakfast.”

He watched the war between food and warmth play on her face and hid a fond smile behind his hand. She frowned, and he knew food had taken priority.  
  
“Fine...”  
  
“’Atta girl.”

* * *

It had started out as a mistake. Too much of the Hanged Man’s mysterious swill on a night when Leandra’s grief turned on Hawke and Bartrand’s betrayal felt fresh despite being nearly a year old by this point. Commiserating had turned into sitting closer for balance, had turned into touching, had turned into…

Well.

A mistake, as they’d agreed upon the next morning with aching heads and Hawke’s bare ass wriggling hypnotically as she attempted to grab a boot stuck beneath his bed.

He should have known at that point that it was no mistake on his part, no matter how much he told himself he was still hung up on Bianca. Hawke had a way of pulling people into her orbit and trapping them there, despite her snark and many, many vices...or perhaps because of them. She was a favorite at the Blooming Rose, a favorite at the Hanged Man, even a favorite at the Hightown parties her mother dragged her along to. Yes, he was a fool to have thought he, of all the residents of Kirkwall that had fallen under her spell, was immune just because he was her trusty dwarf and the narrator of her stories.

He didn’t know whether to consider himself lucky or unlucky that a one time accident became two, then three, and then it seemed every other week she was spending the night tangled in his sheets and in his arms. He should have been alarmed at how natural it all felt a year in, but really...it only felt inevitable.

And yet, all that time, and they’d never actually talked about the relationship they’d been developing in those years between the expedition and the Qunari crisis. Hawke avoided serious talks like the Blight (‘They make me itchy,’ she’d divulged once, after copious amounts of alcohol had loosened her lips enough to reveal her mother’s latest attempts at asking after Hawke’s future matrimonial plans. ‘Anders can help you get rid of that,’ Isabella had piped in immediately after, and the look on the mage’s face had been enough to chase away the less-than-cheery mood of the moment with Hawke’s infectious laughter), and Varric, fully aware of his ability to monumentally screw things up, wasn’t about to make this another notch in his failure belt. No, whatever this was (and it was more than just phenomenal sex), he wasn’t going to question it.

* * *

“That went...well.”

“Were you expecting yelling and flames?”

“Varric, when has anything involving my incredible self _not_ ended with yelling and flames?”

“Good point.”  
  
Hawke gave Varric a little shove, no doubt thinking that he should have prostrated himself in apology for not heaping praise on her head instead of agreeing with her. He’d praise her later, when there was nobody around to see her get uncomfortable.  
  
“Drinks and some Diamondback, Hawke? The Herald’s Rest is no Hanged Man, but it'll do in a pinch. There’s plenty of seedy company I’ve gotta introduce you to.”  
  
“I thought you’d never ask! Orana has no knack for cards, and Dragon never lets me cheat.”  
  
“He gotten any better at bluffing?”  
  
“Still wags his tail on the good cards.”  
  
“And after all I tried to teach him.”  
  
Their laughter warmed them just long enough to reach the tavern, where the heat from the fires and the bodies within replaced the bitter mountain chill. Varric knew the moment she spotted The Iron Bull by the way she went taut.  
  
He didn’t know what he was expecting when he looked up at her face, but her expression was slightly manic, her lips curling into a wide smile, eyes sparkling with blood lust that said ‘I want to fight that’ and...no, no this was exactly what he was expecting, honestly.  
  
Luckily, Bull spotted them before Hawke could attempt to start a brawl right there in the tavern.  
  
“Varric! Finally started bringing a lady-friend around!”  
  
“Ah, not just any lady-friend, Tiny. This is-”  
  
“Marian Hawke, Champion of Kirkwall, so on and so forth; Now, those horns...would you say they’re more deadly in a charge, or more cumbersome?”  
  
And of course, like the whirlwind that she was, Hawke had made her way across the floor to the table the Chargers were posted at and situated herself across from Bull, head propped on her hands and looking all the world like an eager child asking for a fairy tale. Bull glanced at Varric, who simply shrugged and rolled his eyes, heading to the bar to procure the drinks...as usual.  
  
By the time he returned, Hawke had gained a few more enraptured souls around the table and already the chorus of laughs had started up. She’d somehow managed to keep a spot next to her free, and sidled over just enough to give him room, while he passed a tankard into her grasping hand.  
  
Bull glanced over to Varric while Hawke was distracted and smirked.  
  
“I like her.”  
  
“I figured you would.” He knew just about everyone that wasn’t on the bad end of her dagger would. And even some that were.  
  
“You’re a very lucky man.”  
  
Varric raised a brow, and Bull did the same, a ‘you think you could get that past me?’ kind of look. Varric snorted, shook his head, and took a swig from his tankard. Figured he’d see right through them.  
  
“That I am, Tiny. That I am.”  
  
Unable to help himself, he settled a hand at the small of Hawke’s back as she launched into her first-person rendition of her fight with the Arishok (surprise dragon included), and allowed himself to finally relax.

It felt, if only for these few hours, like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided to go for something linear rather than connected drabbles at the moment. It may meander somewhat, but maybe I'll do a more cohesive, edited version once it's finished. Thanks for reading!


End file.
